Detailed Action
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are pending for examination. Claims 1, 11, and 20 are independent.
Response to Amendment
The office action is responsive to the amendments filed on 11/11/2025. As
directed by the amendments claims 1, 6-7, 10-11, and 16-20 are amended.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/11/2025 have been fully considered but they are not fully persuasive.
Applicant arguments regarding 35 U.S.C. § 101:
Examiners response: Applicant’s arguments, filed 11/, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 USC 101 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of 35 USC 112(a).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Regarding Claim 1 step g) recites “g) blocking future traffic from any sources of anomalies detected in step f), thereby improving security of the computing device” Support for this limitation does not appears in the Speciation, drawings, or claims as originally submitted. Based on Examiner review, the nearest support disclosure for this limitation is found on page 8 lines 4-6 and page 18 lines 23-27:
[page 8 lines 4-6]: “One of the important use cases of FL is anomaly detection, which has several real-world applications, such as cybersecurity and the detection of abnormal client behavior in a decentralized setting.”
[page 18 lines 23-27]: “After running the simulation, the local distributions flagged between 1,993 and 1,997 points to be anomalies. These points were those that were sampled from the other two 25 distributions. On the other hand, when passing the 3,000 points to the global distribution, that were originally passed to each edge device, on average only 3-5% of the points were flagged as anomalous. The simulation results verify the hypothesis.”
[page 16 lines 15-22]: “The noise-robust FL models of embodiments of the subject invention can benefit a wide range of applications, including but not limited to: demand side management in energy and power systems in presence of highly noisy weather-related data; automated audio analysis in the presence of environmental noise while preserving privacy of users; image recognition in the presence of highly noisy data; automated fire-fighter robots that need to deal with highly noisy environments when performing in the affected environment; and rescue robots that need to explore highly noisy images and videos of affected areas (e.g., earthquake affected area) and make decisions.”
As shown in the passages above, the specification only describes detecting anomalies without any further details of performing further actions comprising blocking future traffic as recited in claim 1. Claim 10 also further describes performing different applications along with the limitations recited in claim 1 describing detecting anomalies in a cybersecurity setting and blocking future traffic. The specification does not describe “g) blocking future traffic from any sources of anomalies detected in step f)” and in addition further performing the actions described in claim 10.
Independent Claims 11 and 20 recite similar limitations to claim 1 and are also rejected under 112(a) for the reasons listed above.
Dependent claims 2-10, and 12-19 do not resolve the 112(a) rejection from independent claims 1 and 11 are also rejected under 112(a).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Tharaken (US 20250348787 A1) describes federated machine learning and anomaly detection. Moloney et al. (US 20250086461 A1) describes distributed computation of weights by local devices.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TEWODROS E MENGISTU whose telephone number is (571)270-7714. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9:30-5:30.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, ABDULLAH KAWSAR can be reached at (571)270-3169. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/TEWODROS E MENGISTU/Examiner, Art Unit 2127